Good morning. Hello. How are you? #1130
A rough morning, grocery store angst, A ton of music stuff, more musing about the TikTok bill.
Good morning. Hello, how are you, what’s up? Greetings from Chatham County. It is 8:28 AM. I am behind schedule. I apologize. Had to stop at the grocery store after taking Jane to school. And she went to school. Not without massive, endless whining and pouting. Not about school, she was always going to go to school today. Just, about, everything. She made me dress her. At one point she slowly lowered herself to the floor, and mid-way through the carful lowering, she started saying “oh no, I’ve fallen and can’t get up, you have to help me up.”
She was not even down yet.
I stayed so chipper, so motherfrickin chipper, she wouldn’t have been able to tell I was annoyed at all, nope, no siree. She stalled enough that we were “late,” by our standards, which means about four minutes later than usual, but enough that we were stuck behind a bus. God I hate getting stuck behind a bus. The aggro van and the G Wagon both got there before us, I feel like a failure.
But on the way to school the Apple Music Shuffle Gods elected to play both “Waterloo Sunset” and “Come Dancing” by the Kinks and the Kinks are good kids music. I think Jane liked them. They cheered me up. Well, “Waterloo Sunset” did. What a perfect song. Put me right in the mood to hear “Come Dancing” for the ten thousandth time in my life.
After dropping her off I had to deal with traffic, packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes, Sting call it, in a scientifically inaccurate and also kind of weird simile that somehow works nonetheless. Then to the grocery store where I lurked the aisles grouchy and annoyed with having to find Emma’s weird-ass snacks, bemoaning what’s become of my life, my sweetest friend, everyone goes away in the end.
The thing is you can be annoyed with everything and cranky AF and hate the school bus in front of you that did nothing wrong and know that you have an amazing life, and you are about as lucky as can be on this planet. The two are not mutually exclusive, as it turns out.
In the truck the Apple Music Shuffle Gods elected to play “Turn it On Again” by Genesis, which is a great tune. I texted a photo of the screen to my high school girlfriend, whom regular GMHHAY readers will recall I have been on and off chatting with of late. We both loved Genesis in high school. We both still like them. Recently had a chat about the top Genesis and Phil songs. She leans towards the ballads and slow jams, and I did as well back then. But as I get older, and wiser, and happier, and more meloncholy all that the same time (it happens), I find myself enjoying the rockin’ numbers a bit more. Not the pedantic Syd Barrett wannabe Peter Gabriel era, but the prog butt-rock era.
(Speaking of which, the tour is over, the album was announced like two years ago, and Peter still hasn’t delivered the deluxe edition of I/O, despite me ordering it like eight months ago. April 24, the internet tells me).
Two records coming in the mail today, the new Jesus and Mary Chain and the reissue of the Cure’s Paris. Exciting. Listening to the new Dais Records re-issue 3LP Box set of Coil’s Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases). I like it but it is no Love’s Secret Domain. But it’s pretty sweet. This side 3 orchestral piece has some real “Ostia” vibes to it.
Pulp are touring (are we only going to talk about music today? It’s possible. Music is my only healthy opiate these days). It was always too much to expect them to come to Raleigh. I am shocked at the Boston shunning. I don’t want to go to King’s Theater in Brooklyn it is a lovely venue but I am not feeling it for Pulp. I may well skip them. That is what I do now, I guess. I like concerts in 500 capacity rooms within 20 minutes of me, what can I say. Those are my terms.
ELO is touring too and Sean and I went to see them at MSG last tour and it was awesome and if I find myself in Boston on September 23, I will probably go.
(why is it “Pulp are…” and “ELO is…”? I do not know. But it is.)
Charlie Parr is playing the small room at Cat’s Cradle tomorrow and I really want to go. Will I? Who can say, who can say what the mood gods will do to me by then.
Slowly working my way through the Taylor Swift Eras Tour (Taylor’s Version) concert film on Disney Plus. My emotions go all over the map. Mostly I think I probably find reasons to dislike Taylor because of envy and feelings of inadequacy and boy if you are feeling waspish you can find them. “When you’re 22” was so obviously lip-synched. Aaron Dessner’s delicate production blown to shit. Weird 3D VR effects inexplicably added in post.
But I also found myself getting sucked in now and again. “Last Great American Dynasty” is such a genius song. How does someone write a song about being rich and buying a nine million dollar house and make it so brilliant, relatable, and uplifting? Just amazing. The Folklore part of the show, so far (I still have more than an hour left), has been the high point for me. Evermore, paradoxically, a bit of a low. I almost didn’t feel “All too Well,” and then it hit at the end, at that part about half her age, half her weight. Those lines have been ebbing and flowing in my esteem. I wonder how much she agonized about cutting them in the original.
An interesting thing is that in one banter session she mentions that she was wondering how to tour for the “five albums” that she’d made since she last toured (the Reputation Stadium Tour, still streaming on Netflix). But she has, in fact, recorded eight albums since then. Well, nine, but we haven’t heard the Tortured Dead Poets Society Broken Hearted Lonely Hearts Club Band or whatever it’s called. Also she couldn’t have been including that one because she was telling a story that took place in the past.
So, like, do the four re-recorded albums, the Taylor’s Versions, only count as a quarter-album each?
Orrrrr is she including TTPD as one of the five, and she is secretly telling us it was complete prior to the launch of this tour, entirely possible, but she is not touring for it right now, and that was the point of the story? Also what is she going to do with the next leg of the US Tour? She has nine more shows in the US this summer. Is she gonna play tracks from TTPD? Is that what she was telling us??
After Singapore last week, she has no more shows till aftert TPPD comes out. I guess we’ll know soon. May 24th in Portugal. But it looks like she gave herself about a month for TPPD promo between tour dates. We shall see what happens.
People freaking out about the potential forced sale of TikTok. People keep calling it a ban — including some of the lawmakers who voted for it — but it’s not a ban. People keep talking about how the privacy implications don’t matter, and how it’s not a national security threat. I don’t completely buy either of those arguments, I think it could potentially be problematic in both of those areas, but I dont’ particularly care about them. I mean, It’s weird to me that right now TikTok has whipped up a major political movement on its platform all while claiming it is incapable of doing such things.
But whatever. Let’s put that aside. What I care about is that a repressive regime owns a major media outlet in a democracy. I just don’t think that should be allowed. Doubly so when the repressive regime absolutely controls the internet in its own country, and keeps media properties from democracies out of their country. I think there is still a difference between the US and China.
I think fifty years of trying to open up China through increased trade did not work, only made them richer, and we have been played. I think democracy — even our crappy-ass version of it — still matters.
It’s weird to me that people frame this as a free speech issue, I don’t see anyone’s speech being infringed by forcing someone else besides the freakin Chinese government to own the platform on which you make that speech.
Okay ima gonna go now I got so much to do today I am mildly freaking out about it thank god my daughter went to school why is she such a teenager already this is so weird.
Today’s Media of the Day is “Waterloo Sunset” because Harry and Judy seem like such a happy couple. Every Friday night they meet up. Maybe Judy is the sister in “Come Dancing” maybe they’re going dancing. The narrator, is, like, what? Sitting in a window above Waterloo Station that he is, maybe, renting, because he loves the sunsets? Unclear. But it’s still a great song.
i think the 5 albums reference was an easter egg 🙄
Oh man, lots to comment on today.
Waterloo Sunset of course is timeless. Terry and Julie were appar Terrence Stamp and Julie Christie, but then Ray reneged on that explanation. Also, the story of the writing of the song is beautifully explored in Famous Tracheotomies by Okkervil River.
Also Come Dancing was maybe my favorite song when i was 8. Do you remember when it was a frequent (drunken) encore by the Walkmen in the 'early' days?
Finally: Synchronicity II was one of the three songs my first ever band (in high school) covered. (The others were Sweet Leaf and War Pigs by Black Sabbath). I'm still very close with my bandmates. One went into finance, and one became an early member of Broken Social Scene.